Hilm

Antologi horor yang meh. Ray Bradbury yang jadi pembuka bagus, dan Clive Barker yang jadi penutup juga bagus. Tapi banyak yang meleset.

Lalu entah kenapa bahkan review lain yang paling sober memuji The Pyre and Othersnya David Schow. Bacanya bikin bosan.

Tapi bisa juga ini karena ceritanya ditaruh setelah dua cerita paling buruk di antologi ini sih: cerita zombie ga jelas Dark Delicacies of the Dead (Rick Pickman) sama Depompa (William Nolan).

I think I'll just return to reading SF/F.

The most readable essay in this volume is by W.R. Hugenholtz, who wrote about Famine and Food Supply in Java 1830-1914. I did not learn of the famine in various years in Demak, Grobogan, etc. in grade school history lessons so it was new information for me.

However I'm fairly disturbed by the presentation of the Dutch colonizers as a government who merely administer a region, almost as if they were comparable to present day democratic government who are accountable to their subjects.

Probably the only reference to the ills of colonization in this book is this anodyne sentence:

“These payments [from the Cultivation System] were not commensurate with the market value of the products or with the efforts required from the planters.”

The above sentence was from C. Fasseur's essay on the Cultivation System and Its Impact on the Dutch Colonial Economy and the Indigenous Society in 19th Century Java. This essay is also one of the more informative essays in the book, it was well written and structured. Nevertheless, the quoted sentence above was all the more remarkable really because the essay as a whole advocated the reader to look at the Cultivation System more favorably, claiming that it didn't have many negative effects.

I really don't know how to judge the claims, not having read many literatures about the Cultivation System. I must admit it bothers me a lot though. I know I should probably read more about the Indonesian colonial history.

Comparisons with the British Indian colony in this book's essays mainly went over my head because my lack of familiarity with the subcontinent.

Cerpen favorit saya di kumpulan ini ada dua:
Opera Sekar Jagad (Kurnia Effendi) dan Durian Ayah (Rizki Turama). Keduanya tidak pretensius: premisnya natural dan penulisannya menyenangkan untuk diikuti. Ini pembukanya:

“Tangannya yang basah dan licin oleh sabun ikut tertegun. Ia mengenali kain dalam remasannya: batik tulis sekar jagad yang dia bikin hampir empat tahun lalu. .... Punya siapa? Ia tak pernah sengaja menghafalkan baju-baju milik pelanggan yang dia cuci dan setrika.” —Opera Sekar Jagad

“Di antara semua pohon yang ditanam ayah, hanya durian yang sampai sekarang belum berbuah. Padahal tangan ayah setahuku cukup dingin. Karena itulah, perihal durian yang tak kunjung berbuah ini menjadi sesuatu yang cukup mengganjal hati ayah.” —Durian Ayah

Beberapa cerpen lain punya kalimat pembuka yang menarik perhatian, tapi akhirnya tidak semenarik dua cerpen di atas. Misalnya,

“Setelah sholat tahajud, Gus Dar merasa mendapat pesan yang sudah lama ditunggu: kau akan mati pada saat berziarah di salah satu makam wali.” —Ziarah Terakhir Gus Dar (Triyanto Triwikromo)

“Tahukah dikau rasanya membunuh seseorang yang sedang makan lalampa pada gigitan pertama, tepat ketika potongan ketan berisi ikan itu melewati tenggorokannya? Aku tahu rasanya, karena akulah yang membunuhnya.” —GoKill (Seno Gumira Ajidarma)

Menurut saya sih yang betul kerongkongan, bukan tenggorokan. Tapi bebas lah.

“Apakah doa punya aroma? Setiap kali pertanyaan ini datang menggoda, aku akan teringat seorang tukang doa yang setia di masa kecilku. Entah mengapa, tiap kali mengingatnya, lafaz doa serasa bangkit bersama aroma yang membubung dari hidung ke dalam batin.” —Aroma Doa Bilal Jawad (Raudal Tanjung Banua)

Cerpen Doa ini adalah satu dari dua cerpen terbaik pilihan Kompas, bersama dengan cerpennya Faisal Oddang, Kapotjes dan Batu yang Terapung. Kombinasi judul dua cerpen inilah yang menjadi judul buku ini.

Beberapa cerpen lain lagi punya judul yang lebih menarik, walaupun lagi-lagi secara keseluruhan isinya bukan favorit saya. Misalnya:

Laki-laki yang Kawin dengan Babi (Mashdar Zainal)
Cara-cara Klise Berumah Tangga (Novka Kuaranita)
Lelaki yang Menderita bila Dipuji (Ahmad Tohari)

Lalu ada juga satu kutipan menarik dari Ayat Kopi, cerpennya Joko Pinurbo:

“Saya bingung, ajaran sesat mana yang saya sebarkan. Komandan pemuda setempat menunjukkan sesobek kertas bertuliskan, ‘Rayakanlah setiap rezeki dengan ngopi agar bahagia hidupmu nanti.'”

Ini buku kumpulan cerpen yang isinya memang beragam. Saya beri rating 3 bintang.

Cool stories. Bland writing.

I don't think I would have been able to finish this book if it wasn't for the fact that I was confined in a bus that got stuck in a massive traffic jam for 27 hours going from Denpasar to Surabaya, had no other source of entertainment (phone battery tapped out), and had no other reading materials (it was the only book I brought with me).

Of course, you don't really need to know how I finished this book, but subjecting you to that information despite having no relevance whatsoever with the subject at hand is exactly like reading this book. Very often, the author would start a section/chapter by explaining his circumstances first–how he went to great length to get to the bottom of pearl production. Which only managed to give me the impression of him as a misunderstood artist, him living in a world where even his family doesn't get him.

I'm sure that this book could've been compelling (after all this is why I picked up this book: the premise was interesting and I know next to nothing about pearl or any other gemstones), but 100-pages in, I wonder if it's at all possible to write an engaging story about worldwide pearl production in more than five chapters. Afterall, the techniques were the same: you insert a bead, return the oyster to the water for several years, harvest them, and then sell them. The oysters might come from different species, which would account for the diversity of the colors and sizes, but that's about it.

I'd only recommend this book if you're familiar with the dealers and company heads in the pearl world (or if you are very interested to know about them), because in the end, this book is more about them.

I would have given this book 2 stars if it wasn't for a particular passage near the end. He recounted a story when he gave a talk on pearl, and a woman in the audience afterwards approached him to let him know that he gets pearls in a way that no one does, and how pearls gave her a spiritual connection. The author made a point of writing a paragraph “for the skeptics out there” that this woman was a perfectly rational woman that did not give off a new-age vibe. And then continued to tell her story that she did a long-distance healing over the phone to a client in Jerussalem from North America. Without irony.

I had this book for quite some time before I actually crack the cover to read it. I followed Kristof's blog and I know that I'll learn new stuff from it. But the Indonesian subtitle was just too grisly, bombastic, and eventually, off-putting: “Kisah Kekerasan Paling Kejam Terhadap Perempuan di Abad Ini”–the century's most heinous crimes against women.

With that subtitle, one can't help but think that one must muster an adequate level inner strength to read about assault against women. One can't help but think that this is a book that will bring you nightmare if you dare to read it before you sleep.

So I brought this book when I sailed to Komodo Islands. I thought, this will keep me from being overtly giddy with the clear cloudless sky, the magnificent rolling hills of Nusa Tenggara, and the graceful swaying of corals beneath the surface of the sea.

And boy, this book can be grim. Women tricked into human trafficking and sex slavery, women enduring physical abuses from their husbands and mothers-in-law, women had their genital mutilated, women being gang-raped by war militia, women belittled, demeaned, debased, subjugated at the cost of their sights, agencies, sanity, and lives. I actually flinched at the picture of a woman who lost an eye because her husband stick an iron bar to her right eye, and decided that I had read enough misery for the day that I'd better go back to the sea and snorkel with bright gay fishes before I continue reading.

But, you know, don't let the first impression and the cover fools you. It's actually a very optimistic book. Fifty pages in, I started to think that the original subtitle fits better with this book: “Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide”.

This book is a wake up call to alert us that there are still many injustice committed against women. But at the same time, this book is a celebration of women's hardiness and their ability to better their world. Some women in this book were victims of the most horrible crimes, but they ended up being the agent of change for their community, their family, and themselves. They rise against a culture of unfair discrimination and entrenched norms of subordination to men to fight for a better livelihood, protection and education for their children, for a more equal standing, too. Their stories were uplifting, and you'll find yourself wondering if there's anything that you can do to help. It's a good thing that Kristof listed so many resources for an interested reader to start educating themselves further, and connect with other interested individuals to support a cause, donate, etc.

What bothers me about reading it in Indonesian is that the translation can be quite clunky and over literal. There are also typos littered around the book. Lowering the readability even further, the spacing between words are questionably too tight for several paragraphs. This book also needs updating, praises for Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea should be taken with a pinch of salt. Kristof himself wrote a column about it after Jon Krakauer exposed fictionalisations of Mortenson's charity work in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On the other hand, I liked the way Kristof weaved evidence in the narrative of the story. Some of it are from J-PAL and IPA's researches, too: distribution of school uniforms, “sugar daddy talk”, and many more. I think it helped to show that actions can have impacts.

Overall, this is a very accessible primer on the subject, and I think it will be worth your time reading it.

Pandangan saya tertumbuk pada A.M.S.A.T. ketika saya mengobrak-abrik tumpukan buku obral di Mal Ambasador. Nama pengarangnya yang familiar membuat saya menimang-nimangnya sebentar, lalu memasukkannya dalam keranjang belanja. Sudah lama sekali sejak saya baca bukunya yang pertama: J.P.V.F.K., dan saya teringat bahwa buku pertama itu menyenangkan sekali untuk dibaca: saya jadi berkenalan dengan merk-merk fashion terkenal, dinamika jurnalisme mode, dan benturan-benturan norma antara dunia fashion dan adat ketimuran yang dipegang Alif, salah satu tokoh utamanya.

Dari mana lagi saya yang hampir tipikal mahasiswa gembel ITB waktu itu bisa mengerti kata haute couture? Atau tahu bahwa huruf H merk Hermes tidak dilafalkan? Saya jadi tahu bahwa aksesoris-aksesoris dari merk-merk yang berseliweran itu harganya bisa mencapai puluhan dan ratusan juta.

Saya curiga dulu saya melihat diri saya seperti Alif, yang digambarkan tetap teguh sembahyang, menampik minuman keras meski di lingkungan yang bertolak belakang.

Dan ini membuat saya bingung ketika tahu-tahu Alif jadi “pejojing seronok”. Iya, dia gundah tidak lagi bisa memenangkan hati Saidah mantan istrinya. Bolehlah saya percaya dia kalut mengurus majalah yang dia dirikan bersama tiga teman terdekatnya (Raisa, Didi dan Nisa). Tapi mencari pengalih perhatian, dengan menerima tantangan untuk menari striptease dari tokoh yang bahkan tidak pernah disebutkan hingga di halaman 173? Terlalu dipaksakan, sepertinya. Anehnya lagi, untuk sesuatu yang akhirnya begitu menekan reputasi, konflik tentang hal ini seperti terlupakan selama berpuluh-puluh halaman, hingga ketika rahasianya terbuka, hidup Alif berubah semua.

Mungkin memang terlalu banyak konflik yang ingin dijalin Dean untuk Alif dan ketiga tokoh utama lainnya. Raisa harus membuktikan diri keluar dari citra anak manja, memenangkan cinta Alif, dan pergulatan dengan busana identitas agama. Nisa yang hamil di luar nikah harus bersitegang dengan orang tuanya. Didi tahu-tahu terseret kasus konspirasi politik orang tuanya. Dan banyaknya konflik ini tahu-tahu selesai di akhir ketika Nisa meninggal setelah melahirkan, Didi dipecat dari posisinya, dan Alif tewas ketika kantor majalah mereka diamuk massa yang memprotes gambar sampul edisi terakhir mereka yang seronok.

Terlepas dari plot, saya temui juga beberapa kesalahan tipografis, Raisa yang tiba-tiba berubah menjadi Nisa di dialog halaman 209, dan tanda-tanda hubung yang terselip di tengah-tengah baris kalimat. Yang paling mengganjal adalah penggunaan kata loose yang harusnya lose (“I have nothing to loose”, p.189), dan proove alih-alih prove (“Let's proove it”, p.154). Tolong jangan ingatkan saya dengan kata miscalled di halaman 140.

Ini bukan berarti penulisan Dean buruk. Jauh dari itu, malah. Pilihan kata-kata bahasa Indonesianya renyah, dan saya juga menemui kata bersirobok di sini.

Selain itu, ada beberapa bagian yang menyentuh. Salah satunya adalah ketika Alif dan Saidah bercengkerama di KBRI Perancis dengan waria korban perdagangan manusia yang melarikan diri dari Eropa Timur lalu mencari suaka. Bagian lain adalah ketika Raisa mengeluarkan sumpah serapah karena Audi yang ditumpanginya hampir ditabrak oleh motor–sejurus kemudian Alif bertemu dengan kurir yang mengendarai sepeda motor tersebut, gemetaran hampir menabrak mobil mahal sembari merutuki si kaya, tanpa tahu bahwa itu adalah mobil Raisa. Terakhir, sesuai dengan label genre metropop yang disandangnya, tanpa menggurui A.M.S.A.T. mengemas tentang masalah-masalah aktualisasi diri lewat profesi.

Jadi, apakah ini buku yang buruk? Tidak juga. Coba saja baca dulu, siapa tahu suka juga.

Pinjam dari perpus Pardee, baca bab 2 (Is it too late? Young adults and the formation of professional ethics) dan bab 4 (A program to integrate leadership, ethics, and corporate responsibility into management education) setelah ngobrol sedikit sama Adi di HBS.

Despite its publication date in 1993, it doesn't actually feel too dated, although I wonder what changes they have made/how their approach has evolved since obviously the world has changed a lot in the last 30 years.

Chapter 2 is quite interesting, and the authors' answer to the question it posed in its title is–unsurprisingly–no, it's not too late to teach ethics to twenty-something and thirty-something MBA students. Instead, no time is more strategic as they are ready for ethical reflection! But they are vulnerable to ‘vacuous credos' such as “I must do my personal best–which would depend on what company I work for–doesn't matter which company I work for.”

The authors wrote, “Some of these young adults, however, seem to hold deeply cherished values such as dignity of all persons, or a commitment to working on behalf of a specific social issue. But they do not yet appear to have at hand a publicly legitimized, comfortable language whereby they might forthrightly and gracefully articulate those commitments. Without an adequate public language, ethical commitments tend to remain a matter of personal morality and are thus rendered impotent for social and corporate transformation. Many of these students are well motivated, but they are not yet adequately prepared to articulate their values whether in the classroom, the company, or our wider public life.” Personally to me this brings back memories from IM training where Pak AB admonished us for snickering at the phrase ‘role model' (this was before more netizen picked up Jaksel lingo).

They further illustrate the privatized sense of morality through the MBA students' answer to this (I think a very good question): `“You have commented on some of the things you would like to accomplish; as you think across all the years ahead, who do you think you may hurt?” The typical response was, “I hope I won't hurt anybody.”' The authors noted, “they do not yet seem to have a correspondingly clear consciousness of systemic hurt and injustice and its relationship to their own action in the world. They do not readily recognize that many of them will make complex decisions that may affect hundreds or even thousands of people whom they will never see and/or aspects of the ecosystem not immediately evident.”

On noblesse oblige: “When asked, ‘How much money would be enough?' the typical respondent answered, ‘Enough to support my lifestyle.' For most, lifestyle was defined by the norms of material success in the culture. No one mentioned the category of need. It was difficult to ascertain at what point the typical student would decide that enough ‘noblesse' had been achieved to set in motion the activity of ‘oblige'.”

Overall, this was an interesting read, although I didn't get what I was looking for when I picked it up (how does one teach ethics effectively?) but I found it interesting anyway and I will probably get to use the questions to friends from across the river, with a little hope to fluster them to produce interesting answers.

(Review ini sebelumnya saya tulis di blog saya: https://yellowdoorknob.blogspot.com/2015/06/jalan-lain-ke-tulehu.html)

Sulit sekali ternyata merekomendasikan Jalan Lain ke Tulehu ke teman-teman saya. Begitu saya perlihatkan sampulnya, mereka langsung bertanya, “Ini yang ada filmnya itu ya? Pasti iya deh, ini ada ‘Cahaya Dari Timur' juga.”

Susah memang kalau berteman dengan orang-orang yang saking seringnya dapat tawaran nonton bersama pemutaran film Cahaya Dari Timur: Beta Maluku, bisa pasang #sikap kalau-ga-ada-Chicco-Jericho-gue-malas-dateng-kalau-Glenn-Freddly-gue-ga-nafsu. Buat mereka, kalau ini adaptasi sama dengan filmnya, buat apa baca novelisasinya?

Saya yang belum menonton filmnya tidak bisa menyangkal maupun mengiakan. Dan memang sekilas dari sampulnya, sepertinya mirip. Dua-duanya bertuliskan “Cahaya dari Timur”; di kedua poster dan sampul, ada orang bermain sepakbola. Makin tidak tampak baru untuk teman-teman saya.

Maka saya mencoba pendekatan lain untuk merekomendasikan buku ini, “Buat gue sih menarik aja, karya tulisan diceritakan dengan tutur logat Maluku. Terus karena ngga jauh beda sama logat Manado pasar yang dipakai di Banggai, jadi berasa macam kita balik lagi ke sana.”

Saya agak canggung mau merekomendasikan tentang kekuatan plot buku ini, karena, yah, kosakata apresiasi karya sastra bukanlah kosakata biasa saya sehari-hari. Sekalinya dulu ambil mata kuliah apresiasi sastra di ITB, di kelas malah baca Newsweek dan Time. Canggung bercakap sastra saya.

Sejujurnya, ketika saya mulai membacanya, saya langsung terhisap dalam cerita. Tentang Gentur yang harus diselamatkan dari vigilante nasrani yang hendak “membersihkan” muslim dari kapal yang saat itu dia tumpangi. Dan memang ini adalah fokus utama buku ini, tentang konflik antara yang bersalib dan bersalam di awal dekade yang lalu. Konflik ini membawa Gentur ke desa Tulehu, desa muslim yang terkenal sebagai kampung sepakbola.

Kalau ini adalah film sebangsa Air Bud, maka berikutnya pembaca akan disajikan cerita sepakbola membuat orang bisa mengesampingkan perbedaan di Tulehu. Tapi karena ini bukan sebangsa Air Bud, di novel ini justru kita akan menemui ketegangan ketika penduduk desa muslim tidak ingin ada warga kristen yang ikut menonton laga Belanda versus Italia di semifinal Piala Eropa. Penyebabnya pun tidak terasa dibuat-buat: tidak adanya listrik di desa membuat mereka rela mempertaruhkan keselamatan nyawa dengan datang ke desa yang berbeda agama. Adu urat tentu ada, dan saya mendapati diri saya bersimpati dengan si anak kristen yang berpura-pura harus ikut mendukung Belanda walaupun sebetulnya dia mendukung Italia. Bagaimana tidak? Begitu hampir ketahuan kalau ia mendukung Italia, situasi menjadi genting.

Bagi sebagian orang, sepakbola itu bagaikan agama. Bermain (dan menonton) bola bisa punya dampak katarsis yang sama dengan beribadah pada Yang Kuasa. Di sisi lain, terlihat pula di novel ini fanatisme terhadap keduanya ternyata tidak jauh berbeda.

Novel ini juga kaya akan lapisan-lapisan cerita. Tentang Said—mantan atlet kabupaten yang gagal bersinar karena cidera di masa muda—yang mencoba melatih anak-anak bermain sepakbola, tapi juga dirundung permasalahan rumah tangganya. Tentang Gentur yang dikejar masa lalunya—dan memori tentang almarhum kekasihnya yang menjadi korban perkosaan 1998. Tentang Tulehu yang menyimpan banyak memori persepakbolaan Indonesia. Bagi saya, tamatnya novel ini adalah titik awal berkecamuknya pikiran-pikiran yang harus diurai dari observasi yang ditawarkan novel ini.

Observasi pertama adalah tentang kekuatan kerusuhan 1998 sebagai latar cerita literatur sastra Indonesia. Memori atas 1998 adalah salah satu penggerak Gentur di novel ini, dan baru minggu yang lalu saya dapati demonstrasi mahasiswa 1998 menjadi salah satu bagian plot di novel “Pasung Jiwa”nya Okky Madasari. Yang lalu membuat saya bertanya-tanya, kenapa saya tidak banyak menemui literatur populer yang mengangkat peristiwa tahun 1965? Apakah ini karena pengaruh Orde Baru yang “membersihkan” citra dirinya?

Observasi kedua adalah tentang peran lingkungan kita dalam membentuk pilihan masa depan. Waktu kita kecil, saya rasa akan sangat sedikit dari orang tua kita yang tertawa saat kita bercita-cita menjadi dokter dan insinyur dan pilot. Bisa jadi mereka mendukung dengan bangga, dan memang dukungan itu adalah hal yang mudah ketika mereka familiar dengan profesi tersebut (atau bahkan itulah profesi mereka). Tapi bagaimana jika waktu itu kita mengaku bercita-cita menjadi atlet sepakbola atau seniman? Bisa jadi mereka menganggap itu gurauan sepintas lalu.

Di sisi lain, saya bayangkan di Tulehu orang-orang tuanya akan menyangsikan anak mereka bisa lulus sekolah dan kuliah untuk menjadi dokter dan insinyur. Mudah dibayangkan bagi mereka untuk tidak serius menanggapi cita-cita anak mereka, ketika mereka tahu bahwa bersepakbola adalah alternatif yang lebih mudah, lebih lazim dicapai. Lihat saja Aji Lestahulu (PSM), Mustafa Umarella (Pelita Jaya), Kasim Pellu (Bintang Timur Cirebon) yang juga berasal dari desa ini, sementara mana ada anak sini yang bisa jadi dokter?

(Trus yang udah jadi dokter dan pengacara dan insinyur songong deh, “Ini hasil kerja keras gue kok!”).

Yah, paling tidak sekarang saya jadi makin memahami kenapa Kelas Inspirasi itu penting.

Observasi ketiga adalah: tinggal di Jakarta ternyata membuat akses saya terhadap bacaan lokal makin terbuka. Kalau saya tidak tinggal di Jakarta, saya tidak naik transjakarta. Kalau tidak naik transjakarta, tidak bisa mengintai mbak-mbak di halte Halimun yang juga mengantre sambil membaca novel ini. Kalau dia tidak sedang membaca novel ini, saya jadi tidak bisa mengintip isinya. Kalau saya waktu itu tidak mengintip, saya tidak akan tertarik dan mencarinya di Gramedia. Ternyata ada berkahnya juga tinggal di Jakarta.

Skip the Indonesian version, it's horrible-horrible-horrible. Iya, saya tahu menerjemahkan tentang kebahagiaan tidak mudah, tapi membaca terjemahannya meningkatkan ketidakbahagiaan saya.

Seandainya saja yang saya pegang bukan buku pinjaman dari RR yang sudah dia tandai di sana-sini, saya mungkin akan menyerah dan lebih memilih mencari versi bahasa Inggrisnya. Membaca kalimat seperti “Semua orang di sini berbicara bahasa Inggris sebaik bahasa Islandia. ‘Dwi bahasa' bukanlah sebuah kata yang kotor.” (Dari hal. 248. Bentuk dwi- harusnya terikat, dan kalau tidak terikat maka dia jadi dua kata, bukan sebuah kata. Saya jadi ingin mengeluarkan kata kotor membacanya.).

Tapi dengan tanda stabilo RR–saya jadi bisa menebak-nebak alasan dia menandai bagian-bagian seperti di bawah:

“Orang Swiss bahagia karena mereka benar-benar berusaha untuk tidak menimbulkan iri pada orang lain.... Di Swiss, hal terburuk yang dapat terjadi pada Anda adalah menjadi pemenang mencolok nouveau riche (orang kaya baru).”

Kenapa ya RR menandai bagian menjadi nouveau riche? Apakah ini berarti saya bisa minta ditraktir? (Dari halaman 257: Orang Islandia menekan rasa iri dengan membagi barang-barang mereka.)

Eric Weiner sendiri menulis buku ini dengan menjelajah 10 negara: Belanda (tempat ganja dan prostitusi legal), Swiss (bahagia itu hidup dengan kemajuan dan kereta tepat waktu), Bhutan (bahagia itu ada di Shangri-La), Qatar (bahagia itu jadi kaya), Islandia (tempat yang aneh karena orang bisa bahagia dingin-dingin dalam kegelapan ), Moldova (karena bahagia itu tahu bahwa ada yang lebih parah dari kita, dan tidak ada yang lebih mengenaskan dari Moldova), Thailand (bahagia itu mai pen lai–sikap pasrah ya sudahlah mau bagaimana lagi), Britania Raya (rasa bahagia itu bisa dicoba dibangkitkan dengan reality TV), India (bahagia itu menjadi spiritual), dan Amerika (karena bahagia itu pulang ke rumah).

Saya sendiri baru pernah ke dua negara dari daftar di atas, dan kutipan yang dipilih Weiner tentang India membuat saya serasa kembali berada di Paharganj: “‘Saya suka suara klaksonnya, bajaj-nya, para perempuan yang menaruh pot di kepala mereka, kacang walah, lonceng-lonceng kuil.' Mau tidak mau saya memerhatikan bahwa sebagian besar yang ia katakan ada hubungannya dengan indra pendengaran. India adalah pesta perjamuan untuk telinga.” (hal. 448).

Tapi secara umum, saya paling bersepakat dengan halaman 485: “Money matters but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.”

Ini sebabnya saya (kurang lebih) bahagia.

Komik silat yang isinya LOLWUT?!?21?! semua. XDDD

“Akulah lemang, engkaulah tapai. Cintaku basi tanpamu,” ikrarmu. Selalu.

Ada lebih dari satu cara memaknai masa lalu, tapi “Lelaki Ragi dan Perempuan Santan” ini berbahaya bagi mereka yang baru-baru saja nggerus–bayangkan saja si lelaki setia menolak rantang gulai kentang dengan kuah yang kental dan kentang yang kempuh sempurna sebagai tanda pinangan, semua demi menanti si wanita. Namun si wanita justru menerima pinangan pengusaha dari Jakarta.

Ada simetri di cerpen-cerpen Damhuri. Di “Reuni Dua Sejoli”, kedua sejoli sama-sama menghalau teman-teman lama, karena jengah ditanya kapan beroleh keturunan. Di “Dua Rahasia, Dua Kematian”, Angga dan Anggita sama-sama tidak beroleh restu orang tua–yang lalu menyesal ketika anak mereka menjadi korban gempa.

Tapi tidak semua cerpennya berlatar nestapa cinta. Tidak ada romansa di “Luka Kecil di Jari Kelingking”–yang nampaknya bersumber pada pengalaman penulis dihardik saudara dari kota karena lancang mendekat-dekat mobil sedannya, atau di kisah tukang cukur yang menjadi centeng los daging (“Badar Besi”). Ada beberapa cerita mistis, seperti “Tembiluk” tentang anjing berkepala manusia dan “Bayang-bayang Tujuh”, tentang upaya menghabisi raja judi yang punya kekuatan sakti. Ada juga cerita tentang Alimba di “Anak-anak Masa Lalu” yang kesurupan arwah anak-anak yang dipotong kepalanya untuk tumbal pembangunan jembatan–ini adalah salah satu favorit saya.

As the author warned, “There are no smoking guns here.”

Truth to be told, if you paid enough attention to the local newspaper during 2003-2006 fat chance you'll find this book offers you a fresh insight, as nearly all the people here who are against the Fund has written much of the Fund failure elsewhere (notably, Argentina); not to mention their description and interpretation for the photograph featuring President Soeharto signing something with IMF Director behind him.

Nonetheless, I'm still expecting more description for the events related with IMF elsewhere, something new...

—-
I'ts official now, I give up reading this book. a perfect lullaby these days for me

Three things stood out to me reading this essay collection:

1. Clothing.

Ninar Thanita Wongprasert wrote about Undressing Discrimination and this made something click in me. I have been watching Schitt's Creek this pandemic season (as one does) and Patrick's Dad said it best about David Rose.



I haven't been finding a lot of in-depth commentary about David Rose's less-than-uniformly-masculine wardrobe (he wore a skirt at his own wedding and Dan Levy wore one to the Emmys). But here Wongprasert wrote:

Clothing is political in the sense that it has been used by the state to control society and people. It signifies society, history, politics, and culture.

Fashion is an aesthetic politics. Its nature is boundless and may appear to be apolitical on the outside, but is actually very political within. It is well embedded with agenda. Fashion is an effective platform to send across political, social, and cultural messages by anyone and at any time.

As Islamophobia from Thai mainstream communities became more visible, so did in Thai queer communities and activism. An external factor that has triggered Islamophobia within our queer communities and activism is the rapid rise of queerphobic climates from neighboring Muslim dominant nations such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei just within the past few years. Meanwhile, a recent internal factor that has sparked anti-Muslim sentiments is the opposition of some Thai Muslims to the upcoming civil union bill. As a result, queer and queer-friendly Muslims have faced unjustified backlashes and Islamophobia from non-Muslim queer activists and the community members.

“History is still being made. Let us not forget.
And let us live, so that we may not be forgotten.”

I picked up this book because it was in my library's showcase and it looked interesting–I just met a Buddhist black woman for the first time the week prior. The meeting (not about Buddhism) left me realizing that I had never met a Buddhist who is black before. Certainly people with East Asian ancestry when I was in Japan or Indonesia, or if it's people from the west, white people. Yet of course there's no reason why Buddhism can't find followers among the black population, and the message from this book (especially the first part), is exactly that: Buddha's teaching can be relevant for Black people, with some parallels/similarities to African ancestral beliefs. (One essay argued that Buddha himself was black–see his hair in his likeness).

That being said, this book wasn't written for me so not a lot of it resonates with me. I'm not big on religion in general (anymore) and when some chapters reads like sermons (with a few that actually guided the readers through the chants), just not my cup of tea. Other chapters with reflections interested me more, but they often only scratched the surface, likely a limitation of the short essay forms.

Some highlights from this book:

205 If You Demand Magic, Magic Won't Help
Presumably most readers of these novels see themselves in the protagonist's shoes, fantasizing about their own acquisition of sorcery. Wishing for magic. And, barring improbable demographics, most readers of these novels are not scientists. Born into a world of science, they did not become scientists. What makes them think that, in a world of magic, they would act any differently?

181 Universal Fire
Matches catch fire because of phosphorus. Phosphorus is highly reactive; pure phosphorus glows in the dark and may spontaneously combust. Phosphorus is thus also well-suited to its role in adenosine triphosphate, ATP, your body's chief method of storing chemical energy. ATP is sometimes called the “molecular currency.” It invigorates your muscles and charges up your neurons. Almost every metabolic reaction in biology relies on ATP, and therefore on the chemical properties of phosphorus. If a match stops working, so do you. You can't change just one thing.

202 Joy in the Merely Real
If we cannot take joy in things that are merely real, our lives will always be empty.

201 Savannah Poets
What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? That's a real question, what kind of poet can write about Jupiter the god, but not Jupiter the immense sphere?

——
189 Dissolving the Question
Many philosophers share a dangerous instinct: If you give them a question, they try to answer it. Like, say, “Do we have free will?” The dangerous instinct of philosophy is to marshal the arguments in favor, and marshal the arguments against, and weigh them up, and publish them in a prestigious journal of philosophy, and so finally conclude: “Yes, we must have free will,” or “No, we cannot possibly have free will.”

191 Righting a Wrong Question
When you are faced with an unanswerable question—a question to which it seems impossible to even imagine an answer—there is a simple trick that can turn the question solvable. Compare: “Why do I have free will?” “Why do I think I have free will?” The nice thing about the second question is that it is guaranteed to have a real answer, whether or not there is any such thing as free will.

236 Privileging the Hypothesis
In large answer spaces, attention without evidence is more than halfway to belief without evidence.

——–

207 The Beauty of Settled Science
And thinking you can jump right into the frontier, when you haven't learned the settled science, is like trying to climb only the top half of Mount Everest (which is the only part that interests you) by standing at the base of the mountain, bending your knees, and jumping really hard (so you can pass over the boring parts).

209 Is Humanism a Religion Substitute?
When someone sets out to write an atheistic hymn—“Hail, oh unintelligent universe,” blah, blah, blah—the result will, without exception, suck. Why? Because they're being imitative. Because they have no motivation for writing the hymn except a vague feeling that since churches have hymns, they ought to have one too. And, on a purely artistic level, that puts them far beneath genuine religious art that is not an imitation of anything, but an original expression of emotion.

229 Quantum Explanations
Talking to aspiring young physicists about “wave/particle duality” is like starting chemistry students on the Four Elements.

249 No Safe Defense, Not Even Science
Of the people I know who are reaching upward as rationalists, who volunteer information about their childhoods, there is a surprising tendency to hear things like, “My family joined a cult and I had to break out,” or, “One of my parents was clinically insane and I had to learn to filter out reality from their madness.” My own experience with growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family seems tame by comparison but it accomplished the same outcome: It broke my core emotional trust in the sanity of the people around me.

221 Zombies! Zombies?
Native Chinese speakers can remember longer digit sequences than English-speakers. Chinese digits are all single syllables, and so Chinese speakers can remember around ten digits, versus the famous “seven plus or minus two” for English speakers.

225 Belief in the Implied Invisible
Lex parsimoniae: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. That was Occam's original formulation, the law of parsimony: Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.

Interlude: An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes's Theorem
Karl Popper's falsificationism—this is the old philosophy that the Bayesian revolution is currently dethroning. Karl Popper's idea that theories can be definitely falsified, but never definitely confirmed, is yet another special case of the Bayesian rules.

Reading Mas Andreas' works is always a pleasure and this one is no exception, although saying that reading about violence is pleasurable does sound a little perverse. Let me explain: I started this book with the expectation that this book is going to be like Gourevitch's [b:We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families 11472 We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families Philip Gourevitch https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442723264l/11472.SY75.jpg 888905] on the Rwanda genocide which I found super grim. Race, Islam, and Power is written more like a travelogue so it reads easy, unburdened with heavy citations that I'm sure shaped this book in the research stage. In this way I find it closer to Pisani's [b:Indonesia, Etc: Exploring the Improbable Nation 23316545 Indonesia, Etc Exploring the Improbable Nation Elizabeth Pisani https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1413749908l/23316545.SX50.jpg 25993810], but you know, grim.But you can't avoid grimness when writing about violence, and of course Mas Andreas had his pick of major violent events. He divided the chapters by islands and focused on a specific site for each: the chapter on Sumatra is on Aceh/GAM, Kalimantan is Sampit, Maluku is Ambon, Nusa Tenggara is Timor Leste, Papua is Merauke, and Sulawesi is Talaud. Some of his choices are intuitive: I like that he chose to write about both Sabang and Merauke. And opening the book with Sabang I think is very shrewd. Having visited Sabang and being in Aceh a couple of times made this opening vivid and it works very well to hook me in. I suspect this will be the case for many casual visitors, too. The chapter offers a thorough investigation of the roots of the conflict that left me with a clear idea of how it started and its impacts to the present day. This sets the standard for the following chapters: Andreas traced out how the violent events in Sampit and elsewhere escalated from a seemingly minor incidents. I admire his writing: he advanced the narrative fluidly in short sections as he stitched his observations and research with direct quotes from multiple interviews. However, there are also oddities with this book: the chapter on Java is more historical with a lot of discussion on pre-independence day with very little on post-Soeharto violence, despite what the cover may have you believe. I thought that the Sulawesi chapter will be on Poso, but we get an investigation from a border island instead. I also expected that this book would cover the violence against the Ahmadiyah, but it did not get the treatment I think it deserved. I was hoping to read his take on those in this book, but I still learn a lot from what Andreas did write in this book (a selection of some interesting passages: https://twitter.com/masyhurh/status/1133504088883306496). I'm going to end this review with a quote:“Too many Indonesians think of Indonesia as an inheritance, not as a challenge nor a common project. Where one has inheritance, one has inheritors, and too often there are bitter quarrels as to who has rights to the inheritance.”This (abridged) quote is by Ben Anderson, and I can think of no better remark to encapsulate this book than that.

This book is downloadable at archive.org/details/GJA01.

“BAPA, mengapa tidak ada orang Irian yang jadi pahlawan nasional?”

This quote opens the first chapter and is probably the strongest opening you can ask for. I think the original essay was written before 1993–which I later learned was when the government admitted some Papuans to be a national hero. This includes Frans Kaiseipo whose face graces our current Rp.10.000 bills.

The quote made me pause to think how little I thought about where Indonesian national heroes come from. And 1993 was not so long ago: Indonesia had almost been independent for nearly 50 years. And while the Pepera did not happen until the 1960s, several decades had passed and it could only mean nothing but neglect.

The essays in these book vary in topics (and somewhat in quality). I think the first chapter on the erasure of Papuan nationalism in Indonesian historiography posed a deep and powerful question on what it means to be a part of Indonesia but it doesn't read easily.

I find the chapter on transmigrasi the most interesting. Here the author classified four types of oppositions to the transmigrasi program, one of which was the environment group. More interestingly, he listed rebuttals/counter arguments to the allegations that transmigrasi was a Javanization, Islamization, and militerization. His rebuttals were:
- in more recent years (1980s) migrants came from Bali and NTT–not Java.
- Balinese and NTT population weren't Muslim.
- A similar program to Desa Sapta Marga program that relocated decommissioned military personnels to South Sulawesi in the 1950s to counter DI/TII insurgency was never carried out in Papua. (I had no idea such program existed!)

Nonetheless, he admitted that there is an “issue of substance” remaining: involuntary takeover of traditional lands. For this he cited a 1986 Kompas article that reported traditional chiefs in Mimika “donated 300.000 ha of lands for transmigrants”.

I find this fascinating because of how little I know about this and there is a new study out on West Papua Transmigration (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3601528).

Rating: 4/5 well worth the time.

A highly recommended reading. Some quotes:

Chapter 1:
At no time, certainly in the last 3500 years, did people cease to live [in Palestine]. The Zionist catch-cry ‘A land without a people for a people without a land' was, when first uttered in the 19th century, palpably wrong.

For an Australian of British ancestry such a slogan necessarily touches a raw or sensitive chord. Australia was of course described as ‘terra nullius'. That genocide was practised on the Australian aboriginal cannot be denied. Readers interested in attempts by Australia to rectify the wrong might well start with the decision of the Australian High Court in Mabo and Another v The State of Queensland [1988]
—-
Chapter 3:
In 1928 [Transjordan] achieved modified independence sufficient to control immigration policy.

The indigenous people of Palestine, however, were not considered fit for independence or to have control over immigration before 1948. At any time before the end of WWII independence for Palestine would have meant an Arab immigration minister. An immigration minister, as John Howard and Philip Ruddock made very clear to Australians in the early years of this century, is a most important minister, because every sovereign nation has the right to say who is admitted and when.

It is ironic that the parts of the Arab world which achieved independence following the break up of the Ottoman Empire were the most socially, culturally, and economically backward, while the more sophisticated areas, including Palestine, were placed under the control of Western Christian nations.
—-
Chapter 4:
there is convincing evidence that Zionists prompted Jews in Arab countries to move to Israel. Iraqi Jews had no desire to adopt Zionism. Former CIA agent Wilbur Eveland asserts it was necessary for Zionists to attack Iraqi Jews to induce them to “flee to Israel, and that they planted bombs in Iragi synagogues and in an American building in an attempt to portray the Iragis as anti-American and to terrorise the Jews.”
—-
Chapter 5:
During the war of 1948, more than half of the Palestinian population at the time 1,380,000-were driven off their homeland by the Israeli Army.
Though Israel officially claimed that a majority of the refugees fled and were not expelled, it still refused to allow them to return, as a UN resolution demanded shortly after the 1948 war.
—-
Chapter 7:
The International Court of Justice found that the right of self-defence did not apply because there was no armed attack against Israel by another state. Israel's problem was building the wall in the Occupied Territories. If Israeli settlers were not located there a situation of Israel's own making they would not require protection. The problem was they were seeking to defend its citizens in Occupied Territories where they had no right to be.
—-
Chapter 11:
Ilan Pappe has described Israel as a herrenvolk democracy; democracy only for the masters, for one ethnic group, which, given the space Israel controls, i.e. including the Territories, is not even a majority group. No known definition of democracy applies to Israel.
—-
Postscript
A final statement. The Jewish people, rightly, came out of World War II with the goodwill of the world. The state of Israel and those who support it, have, however, in my opinion, used up that goodwill.
Paul Heywood-Smith
27 July 2014

It's ok. This book isn't written for me, a newcomer to Australia, but it made me wonder who is it being written for? Very fragmented, with writings from Oscar Wilde, Charles Darwin, etc., the bits in their writings that mentioned Australians.

3.5 stars rounded up.

It's a little messy and not exactly easy to follow. It gave me more Shia-Sunni historical history than what I had expected. Also more than expected: Saudi/middle eastern politics, ruminations on islam in Europe (the last chapter has a strong Islam apologia flavor). Of the twelve chapters, five aren't about the his hajj experience—but more about his spiritual journeys to get there/his perspectives after he returned.

In chapter three, he got circumcised as an adult before his pilgrimage to Mecca because, ‘the religious opinion that terrorizes my soul the most came via Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani [who] opined: if an uncircumcised pilgrim in ihram be he adult or discerning child, performs a tawaf, it is invalid. An [cut] penis could be a dangerous thing in the small Indian town I grew up in. But once there were riots. [My grandfather] recounted how his two best friends were stripped, genitally identified as Muslim, and hacked to death. In my many nightmares, my ihram would fall off in Mecca, subjecting unsuspecting pilgrims to my un-Muslim penis.' (p76-77)

He asked a female friend to join her. “Shahinaz was an old fried. She, like me, was gay. She was ‘Allah conscious' like her Somali parents in Paris, but Islam's strictures were not for her.” (P81) they were of course separated because of their genders.

When they finally start donning ihram:
“Upon donning the lower part of my ihram, after performing all rituals and making sure I wore no underwear, I realized the sexual potential of an unsheathed penis rubbing against this made in China towel fabric. ‘A horny gay man into mid-eastern types would be in paradise here, with all this man smell and exposed genitalia, I texted Shahinaz. We looked like the men I had seen in gay-hookup saunas during my first trip to the US in 1998. Also, fragrance was part of the long list of the forbidden while wearing ihram, making for an unpleasantly malodorous Hajj. We were innocents, she and I. No one had ever dared to tell us the unspeakable horrors that unfolded when unsheathed male genitalia rubbed against the bodies of hundreds of thousands of women, not separated in the holy mosque of Mecca. At peak time, the tawaf was violent. The majority of these men had never been in such extreme proximity to the bodies of women. And not every male pilgrim had the discipline of piety.” (P116-117)

After Hajj:
“For the first TV interview, the anchor asked me how the Hajj changed me. ‘How to deal with claustrophobia,' I said, laughing. ‘But more seriously it was a life-transforming journey because in Mecca I killed the part of me that questioned whether Islam would accept me. In its place was the certainty that it was up to me to accept Islam.'”


Read in June 2023 (Pride month!) but also hajj season (idul adha is on the 29th) and my mom just started her Hajj as I wrote this.

3.5 stars rounded up.

Its earnestness is showing strongly (which I like), if somewhat rough, and meandering with lots of affectations. Overly reliant on lots of cultural references which feels a bit all over the place. Several typos peppered the novel, which is unfortunately quite distracting.

Things I like: small-town set up (Probolinggo), wide ranging cast—possibly too many? But the numbers and character diversity are possibly instrumental in avoiding stereotypical descriptions of gays: there's all kind of gays here. (And an acknowledgment that one of the characters may be bisexual.)

The narrative structure is certainly a choice: commentary on each character's naming, epistolary style, a storyteller-like expositions, Q-and-A style chapter.. I can't say it 100% works. But this is short so in the end I basically read it in a sitting.

3.5* rounded up

This may be the first memoir from an Indonesian who is part of the LGBTQ+ community that I read—regrettably I don't think there's a lot of these and there should be more. This book coincidentally made a fitting answer to my partner's hypothetical question: what would you do if you want to get out of Indonesia and live abroad?

My answer was, as a sobat kabupaten, I didn't dream of living abroad. Moving to a city was already a sea change. But reading about Arozak's path was eye opening.

Compared to memoirs and essays l've read recently, this reads like Linda Sarsour's We're in This Together. My partner pointed out that there's a book with which this book shares common themes: Matt Ortile's The Groom Will Keep His Name (Ortile is a Pinoy in the US). I think would have liked this book even more if Arozak gave the readers more space for suspense, tension, and feelings before moving to resolutions.

A fun read, full of action, and the art is gorgeous. Bumping it to 5 stars for the art.